Yesterday, British broadcaster, actor, producer and director Stephen Fry launched this 12-minute animated documentary. It shows how certain UK politicians have built their careers by stirring up fear of immigrants and fear of a ‘mythical EU dragon’ over the past couple of years.
The video opens with an illustration of an illusion known as ‘forced perspective’, which Stephen Fry suggests is how the politicians have convinced people that these fears are real. As he points out, and as I mentioned in my previous post, they and the mainstream media promoting their views have used propaganda techniques similar to those used by the Nazis in the 1930s.
In the US, Donald Trump brands all news stories and facts which contradict his narrative as ‘Fake News’. Similarly, these UK politicians have branded inconvenient facts and forecasts as ‘Project Fear’.
Thanks to this approach, facts are unlikely to convince supporters of these politicians to change their minds. Stephen Fry explored this phenomenon in a previous video about the Dunning-Kruger effect … and explained how to tackle it.
In his excellent new book How to be right … in a world gone wrong, Radio talk show host James O’Brien describes how the media have fuelled the rise of this type of politician.
As with climate change, media organisations like the BBC have attempted to preserve ‘balance’ by interviewing people who have opposite views for the same amount of time. However, even if 95% of scientists are convinced that climate change has happened, this attempt at ‘balance’ gives disproportionate exposure to the 5% that do not.
James O’Brien suggests that his approach of asking people ‘why?’ (rather than the ‘what?’ asked traditionally by interviewers) obliges those he is interviewing to explain why they believe what they do, often revealing their misconceptions. However, he lays the blame for this at the door of the politicians who have misled his callers, not his callers themselves. Here is his recent RSA discussion about his book, which inspired me to buy the book.
Another impressive, recent initiative is the podcast series Dial M for Mueller, with award-winning investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr (who revealed the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal) and Peter Jukes. The latest episode explores why Nigel Farage is a ‘person of interest’ for the FBI investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.
As I have mentioned before, Rabindranath Tagore attempted to warn the world about the dangers of nationalism over 100 years ago. His 1939 dance-drama Shyama , written in the context of growing tensions of pre-Independence India and the rise of nationalism in Europe, opens with a foreign merchant who is falsely accused of theft by a repressive regime.
I was happy to see that French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated this in his speech on Armistice Day. Fortunately, there are still a few politicians around who are brave enough to stand up to the real Project Fear.